


In the old embrace

by Katarik



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Character of Color, Gen, POV Character of Color, POV Multiple, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything old is new again. Yuletide 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the old embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amaresu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/gifts).



_Sail before the wind_

Daja knows the others worry about her. They all worry about Tris -- Daja's caught Sandry having quiet words with the cloth of Tris' saddle, and sometimes when Daja glances at her Sandry flares like white-hot metal in Daja's vision, pushing power at Tris' clothes to have them absorb as much movement as Sandry can **make** them. Daja's caught Briar spelling more power into Tris' medication, trying to push healing into her the same way he'd push his magic through a plant's veins, even though they learned with the blue spots that trick didn't work. None of them know what to do with a Tris who is occasionally paler than the paper in her books, or a Tris who sways in the saddle in the middle of a fight.

Daja can understand worrying about Tris. She objects to them worrying about her.

She's coming home because it **is** home; she's coming home because she was always Sandry's sister- _saati_ even when Sandry was back in Emelan, because she thinks in Briar's voice, because she looks on storms as signaling Tris' mood. She's coming home because she doesn't know who Daja Kisubo is without the others. She could no more be without Tris than a fire could live without air, or without Briar than without fuel, or without Sandry than without... Sandry is the spark, Daja knows. Sandry is what starts the fire burning. No amount of oxygen and fuel create fire without a spark.

She isn't coming home because of Rizu. Even if the others look at her like they know Daja dreams of her, how she curls up with a pillow because her body can't get used to not having someone else in the bed.

Daja misses her. She misses Rizu like she misses her own forge -- the way sunlight looked on Rizu's skin, how she moaned at the touch of Daja's living metal hand ("there, Daja, just -- harder, please, **Daja**! "), the light in her eyes when she'd press Daja for stories. Daja had started teaching her Tradertalk. She'd been happy, dizzy with it.

But Daja isn't finished just because she doesn't have Rizu now. She would have been finished if she'd stayed in Namorn and the others left. She can finish building her own home, a refuge for them all, and maybe someday she'll go back to Namorn. Maybe.

_Filled with green enemies_

It's the _shakkan_ that starts scolding Briar first, one day when he's pruning it idly and thinking of Berenene's greenhouses before he shoves her out of his mind.

 _How can you not miss the sun, boy? Even when it burns_ , doesn't so much enter his head in words as it does in feelings: stretching leaves towards warmth and bright heat, though the heat withers leaves and cracks bark, because it also makes the green fire pump faster.

Briar shakes his head doggedly. He's had more than enough of emperors and empresses, more than enough of Imperial pomp and pride, even if it also came with Aliput lilies and Gongxe incense bushes. Imperial pride comes with Sandry bleeding, Tris half-dead in a bed, Daja dull-eyed for lack of her girl.

Imperial pride comes with nightmares that had had all three girls sitting silently by his bed when he woke last night, Sandry embroidering sigils that flashed silver in Briar's vision and Daja working cold wire and Tris reading, lightning sparking in her hair for something to see by.

Briar hadn't said a word then, and neither had they, not even Sandry, though she'd been the first to put her work aside and crawl into bed with him, the silk of her nightclothes soft against Briar's side. Daja had followed, wrapping an arm around Sandry's stomach to poke Briar in the gut, and finally Tris, putting her book aside with a sigh as she slipped in on Briar's other side.

"You know the bed isn't big enough for this," Briar had managed to croak, dry-voiced, and Sandry had hit his head gently with the palm of her hand.

He'd gone back to sleep warm, Sandry silk-smooth and comforting, Daja smelling of forged metal and warm in the back of his mind, Tris still staticky and bright.

He thinks of that now, how his arms and legs had fallen asleep under the weight of the girls, and tells his _shakkan_ , "It isn't supposed to burn. People aren't like suns: you can have more than one."

The _shakkan_ hushes, and Briar finishes pruning before it prods him again, pushing through that as far as it is concerned, the empress had been a better gardener than anyone but Rosethorn and Briar himself.

"I know," Briar murmurs to it, thinking again of how obvious her love for her plants had been before he deliberately thought instead of Sandry's terror when she'd been locked in the dark. "Gardener or not, she's just like that Chammuri _belbun_ noble, and I'm not for the likes of that."

_See it on the wind_

Namorn hadn't proved anything that Tris doesn't already know: even among mages, Tris is the odd one out. Tris would rather be reading about Namornese religion when Briar is with one of his girls, or Daja with Rizu, or Sandry with Shan -- it isn't that Tris still dislikes people, distrusts them, Tris has mostly grown out of that. It's more that Tris doesn't see the point.

Tris has better things to do with her time and energy than kissing, and petting, and everything else that makes Briar sit so relaxed on his horse, had made Daja flush and beam after she and Rizu had paired off.

Tris had wanted to be **normal** , not someone who couldn't care less about boys -- or girls, Tris qualifies. Not someone who could weave wind like thread, not someone shaping the earth like Briar shaped trees or bending lightning the way Daja bent metal.

 _This is normal_ , Sandry murmurs in Tris' mind, sending her pictures of the peace on Tris' face on calm, misty mornings. Daja joins in with the way Tris smiles with lightning playing over her skin, jumping from hand to hand. _This is normal for you, Coppercurls_ , Briar finishes, adding the dreaminess in Tris' voice when the wind shows her lights in the sky.

"For us," Tris murmurs aloud, and the other three turn in their saddles to grin at her.

_Now we're grown_

Sandry knows the others had been trying to help. She even knows they were right: it would have made more trouble for Ambros, especially after what the four of them had done to Ladyhammer, to leave him to Berenene without the Landreg title to give him enough power to defend himself. And with _cleham_ Landreg backing it, Namorn's awful kidnapping custom will surely be overthrown.

Which doesn't mean she doesn't still think, when the others are sleeping (or trying to, and Sandry tells Briar's blanket to loosen up a little to let Briar breathe) that she's betrayed her mother.

The Landreg land and titles have been in Landreg hands for fourteen generations; Ambros and Sandry share blood and, now, friendship, but he is not a Landreg.

It has never occurred to Sandry before this trip that being a good _clehame_ and being a good Landreg might mean different things.

"Just like a noble," Briar mutters from his sleeping roll, and Sandry starts.

"Keeping the rest of us up nattering to herself," Daja finishes, rolling over, her eyes gleaming in the light from Sandry's crystal.

"Not even doing it aloud so we could be properly cross," Tris adds, sitting up in bed herself.

"As I wasn't speaking aloud," Sandry says crossly, and she can **hear** Briar thinking to himself that Sandry is on her dignity again, so her voice sharpens even further. "You three can all go back to sleep."

Briar throws one of her hanks of wool at her head. "You didn't let me get away with that rot," he says, and Sandry is even more cross for how cheerful he sounds. "Fair's fair, my lady."

"You didn't do the only thing possible for your people," Daja slips in quietly, hiding a yawn behind her hand. "You did the only right thing. Right is not the same as painless."

Had she done the right thing for her ancestors? For her children?

She is, Sandry knows, a person in her own right -- proving that had taken considerable time and effort. But she is also Landreg and daughter of Landregs, mother, eventually, of Landregs, and she has a responsibility to her name.

"Good only to be waited on and to marry," Tris says softly, her braids floating around her face. "And to bear children and pass on land. Is that really what you're thinking, Sandry?"

... Has that been what she's thinking? Truly? Sandry sits for a moment, her circle sitting quiet around her, and when she finally begins to laugh at herself it is Daja that moves to hug her, when her laughter begins to break into harshness, and Briar that strokes her hair, and Tris that flares Sandry's crystal bright before coming in to rest her pointy chin on Sandry's shoulder as she laughs and shakes and laughs.


End file.
